"woman newly married or about to be," Old English bryd "bride, betrothed or newly married woman," from Proto-Germanic *bruthiz "woman being married" (source also of Old Frisian breid, Dutch bruid, Old High German brut, German Braut "bride"), a word of uncertain origin.

Gothic cognate bruþs, however, meant "daughter-in-law," and the form of the word borrowed from Old High German into Medieval Latin (bruta) and Old French (bruy) had only this sense. In ancient Indo-European custom, the married woman went to live with her husband's family, thus the sole "newly wed female" in such a household would have been the daughter-in-law. On the same notion, some trace the word itself to the PIE verbal root *bhreu-, which forms words for cooking and brewing, as this likely was the daughter-in-law's job. An Old Frisian word for "bride" was fletieve, literally "house-gift."

"intoxicating liquor made by malt fermentation," Old English ealu "ale, beer," from Proto-Germanic *aluth- (source also of Old Saxon alo, Old Norse öl), which is of uncertain origin. Perhaps from a PIE root meaning "bitter" (source also of Latin alumen "alum"), or from PIE *alu-t "ale," from root *alu-, which has connotations of "sorcery, magic, possession, and intoxication" [Watkins]. The word was borrowed from Germanic into Lithuanian (alus) and Old Church Slavonic (olu).

In the fifteenth century, and until the seventeenth, ale stood for the unhopped fermented malt liquor which had long been the native drink of these islands. Beer was the hopped malt liquor introduced from the Low Countries in the fifteenth century and popular first of all in the towns. By the eighteenth century, however, all malt liquor was hopped and there had been a silent mutation in the meaning of the two terms. For a time the terms became synonymous, in fact, but local habits of nomenclature still continued to perpetuate what had been a real difference: 'beer' was the malt liquor which tended to be found in towns, 'ale' was the term in general use in the country districts. [Peter Mathias, "The Brewing Industry in England," Cambridge University Press, 1959]

Meaning "festival or merry-meeting at which much ale was drunk" was in Old English (see bridal).

suffix forming adjectives from nouns or other adjectives, "of, like, related to, pertaining to," Middle English -al, -el, from French or directly from Latin -alis (see -al (2)).

"royal tax," a term that survived in old law and in scot-free; late Old English, "municipal charges and taxes," also "a royal tax or contribution sometimes levied for support of local officers." This is from Old Norse skot "contribution," etymologically "a shooting, shot; a thing shot, a missile" (from PIE root *skeud- "to shoot, chase, throw"). The Old Norse verb form, skjota, has a secondary sense of "transfer to another; pay." It is related to Old English sceotan "to pay, contribute," Middle English scotten "to bear one's share of;" Dutch schot, German Schoß "tax, contribution."

Also via Old French escot "reckoning, payment" (Modern French écot "share"), and via Medieval Latin scotum, scottum, both from Germanic, as is Spanish ecote. 

From c. 1300 as "payment for food or drink at a social gathering," also figurative (late 12c.), a sense also in the Old French word. Hence scot-ale (n.) "a drinking party, probably compulsory, held by a sheriff, forester, bailiff, etc., for which a contribution was exacted" [Middle English Compendium], attested from late 12c., with ending as in bridal. "Scot implies a contribution toward some object to which others contributed equally" [Century Dictionary].